“A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. They then dwell in the house next door, and at any moment a flame may dart out and set fire to his own house. Whenever we give up, leave behind, and forget too much, there is always the danger that the things we have neglected will return with added force.” -C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 307.

This is a common theme in Jung–the return of the neglected with added force. He even has a fancy name for it, enantiodromia. The quote above occurs in a section where Jung is discussing his travels to India and his reactions and reflections to Indian philosophy and religion. The Christian, he says earlier, demands good from himself and rejects evil, while the Indian strives to experience his nature as it exists outside of good and evil. It seems to me that Jung finds something to argue with in both these perspectives. Cast out evil entirely, and it is liable to return with even greater demonic force. Cast out passionate engagement in the moral struggle of good and evil, and the passions are liable to return and burn the house down. I like this skepticism about absolute standpoints, because it seems to reflect reality. We’ve all known the morally perfect person who requires those around him to carry his incredible darkness. We’ve all known the person who seems to exist beyond the passions but secretly harbors perverse passions or collects troubled companions on which to project his disavowed humanity.

Depth Psychologist CG Jung was fascinated by the mythological figure of Mercurius, who shows up in ancient alchemy as a trickster deity. Jung sees alchemy and its fantastical images and chemical experiments as a reflection of human psychology, and especially of processes by which individuals and relationships go through developmental transformations. Mercurius is the imaginary figure who gets us started on a path of transformation, and is also the ever-elusive goal of the process.

Here’s what Patrick Harpur says about Mercurius in The Philosopher’s Secret Fire:

“In Mercurius we see the characteristic that so excited Jung: he (or, she, or it) is coincidentia oppositorum, a coincidence of opposites, the point at which all the contradictions which rend existence are resolved. He is the beginning, middle, and end of the Great Work – prime matter, secret fire and Stone… Mercurius… is one’s own soul and also the Soul of the World; as personal as a lover, as impersonal as a god. Like the Tao, he is everything and nothing, everywhere and nowhere. Like a trickster deity he is both sublime and ridiculous, never allowing his spiritual side to become divorced from matter, never allowing the high mystical goal of the Great Work to become altogether divorced from its dark physical side.”

This is the language of alchemy and mythic consciousness, and is rather foreign to modern sensibilities. Yet the psyche, as anyone who pays attention to dreams and waking imagination knows, does not behave like a machine. Mechanical metaphors for brain and behavior tell us something true about a biochemical and behavioral basis for psyche, but to be in contact with the psyche means to be in contact with a fluid, moving, emotional, and image-rich level of your being. Here, in this experience of the fluid psyche, Mercurius is a guide. It is also the level where real changes in the individual can begin to take place as the process of becoming oneself – what Jung calls “individuation” – moves forward.